July 22, 2013

Hunger Strike: A Protest Across California

For the past two weeks, thousands of California inmates in solitary confinement have been protesting conditions in security housing units with a hunger strike. Among the demands: that a photograph be allowed in the cell, and that counseling and more nutritious food be provided.

Host Dick Gordon speaks with Steven Czifra, who has been out of prison for a decade but is participating in the hunger strike in solidarity. Czifra spent eight years in solitary confinement starting when he was 14 years old. At one point, he spent a whole year without ever leaving his cell. “I think the point is to crack people,” he says. "They don’t care if you go crazy."

Aglaya Glebova, a Russian-American graduate student, marched in Moscow last December and wrote that elections for Vladimir Putin and the parliament were rigged. She tells Dick that fellow demonstrators have been arrested and the protest movement is flagging.

Iraqis went to the polls 6 weeks ago, expecting to choose a new government, but it hasn't actually worked out that way. Ahmed Fadaam noticed that people on the street were doing something curious with the campaign posters.